MCN's Statham explains internet outage

Sage Statham, Mendocino Community Network business manager, presented information at the Aug. 21 Mendocino Unified School District Board of Trustees meeting about the recent Internet service outage on the Mendocino Coast.

On Sunday, Aug. 3, a aerial fiber optic line along Comptche-Ukiah Road was broken by a passing vehicle, interrupting telephone, Internet, cell phones and 911 service to many area residents, not only on the coast but inland as well.

Statham said the fiber optic line runs from Ukiah, across Highway 253 to Boonville, along Highway 128, then along Flynn Creek Road to Comptche and west along Comptche-Ukiah Road to Mendocino. From Mendocino, the line continues along Highway 1 to Fort Bragg.

"This allowed MCN to provide high speed DSL for homes and businesses within three miles of Fort Bragg and Mendocino," he said. "The new DSL services work right over an existing [plain old telephone service] line."

"One of the most important questions to us is why did the 911 service fail for Fusion phone and Internet customers even though it is still a POTS line," Statham said. POTS means plain old telephone service.

He said the answer has to do with how calls are routed. MCN's Fusion service only has access to the fiber optic line along Comptche-Ukiah Road. When the line was cut, phone calls could not be routed to the 911 dispatch center or anywhere else. The same was true for many people with cell phones, customers of Comcast Internet with VOIP phones and AT&T U-Verse phone customers, Statham said.

"Thus, thousands of people in our community were without direct access to emergency services," he said.

No plan B

Statham said that when he took over as manager of MCN in October 2013, MCN asked that Sonic, their main service provider, request access to AT&T's additional fiber optic path along the South Coast. AT&T owns a fiber optic line that runs south to Sonoma County and across to Santa Rosa.

"At that time, AT&T told Sonic that it was not available," he said. "We have asked Sonic to look into it again. We have unconfirmed information that this fiber route is available. If it is available to AT&T, it will be available to Sonic and MCN Fusion customers as well."

The issue is that there are two AT&T's, he said. One company is the local provider and the other is for the lines themselves. The AT&T division that owns the fiber optic lines is not obligated to provide access to those lines, Statham said.

Statham said that even if MCN gains access to the South Coast fiber line, a break in the stub line going to Fort Bragg would still leave those customers without service.

MCN is going to offer customer rebates prorated on service for the two days the Internet was inaccessible, Statham said. The rebate will appear as a line item credit on the September bill. He said that Sonic is also going to give MCN a refund on fees for that period of time.

Statham attended a meeting on Aug. 18 in Ukiah with Rep. Jared Huffman, Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman, Dan Hamburg, 5th District supervisor, staff from State Assembly member Wes Chesbro's office and representatives from Comast and AT&T.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the nature of the outage and how to prevent another outage from occurring. Statham said the idea of installing a redundant fiber optic line from Fort Bragg to Willits or Laytonville was raised, but nobody was willing to commit the millions of dollars needed for the project.

Also in attendance at the meeting were Jim Moorehead, chairman of the executive committee of the Broadband Alliance of Mendocino County, and Randy MacDonald, Comptche Volunteer Fire Department assistant chief and representative of the county's Office of Emergency Services.